


Lose You

by Agib



Series: Febuwhump 2020 [9]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Aaron Hotchner is Spencer Reid's Father, Alternate Universe, Ambitious But Rubbish, Episode: s04e18 Omnivore, Except Hotch is actually Reid's Father, Father Figures, Father-Son Relationship, George Foyet is a bitch, He can fight me, Hurt Derek Morgan, Kidnapping, Missing Persons, My goal is to make Hurt Derek Morgan a tag, Protective Aaron Hotchner, Spencer Reid Doesn't Work for the BAU, Unsub | Unknown Subject, Very AU, Young Spencer Reid, why isn't that a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22628488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agib/pseuds/Agib
Summary: Ten years ago Aaron Hotchner was working the Boston Reaper case.Ten years ago, Aaron Hotchner said goodbye to his son and never saw or heard from him again.Ten years ago, the head of the Boston PD made a deal with the Boston Reaper, and that deal expires today.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid, Aaron Hotchner & The BAU Team, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Series: Febuwhump 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619311
Comments: 49
Kudos: 548
Collections: And Suddenly: A Child, General Manager at the Wendy’s in Fairbanks, Just.... So cute...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Ew this was so hard to write I built it up too much in my head and now I hate how it came out. 
> 
> It's very AU, and there's barely anyone who's written a fic with Hotch as Reid's Dad but fuck it I guess.
> 
> INDULGE THE ANGST I PRESENT TO YOU.

“Come in,” Aaron said evenly, putting down the phone.

“I think I found it,” Garcia held a file in her hand, stepping forward and placing it on the desk. “Michigan Post, March seventh, nineteen-ninety-eight.” She stopped, clasping her hands in front of her dress as Aaron leaned forward to read the page. “Is that right?” She asked after a brief silence.

“Huh,” the agent breathed, reading the wording.

_I will stop hunting you if you stop hunting them. ‘Til death do us part. – T.S._

“Yes,” he confirmed, putting the page down slowly. Although he had spoken to Tom Shaunessy about this supposed ‘contract’ he had made with a murderer, seeing its existence proven was another thing.

“Because I found it, do I get to know what it’s about?” Garcia asked hopefully, breaking Aaron’s train of thought.

“The Reaper,” he answered simply.

“Like… The Boston Reaper?” She pressed; her voice incredulous. He gave a slight nod, not loving to picture the case. “I didn’t even know the B.A.U worked on that case,” she admitted.

“Nineteen-ninety-eight. It was my first case for the B.A.U as lead profiler,” Aaron explained. He regretted never having done more. Sure, the murders had supposedly stopped, but the man who killed so many had gotten away with it. And here he was, ten years later, only just now finding out the officer he had worked the case with had made a deal with the killer.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but we don’t have a profile for The Reaper in our system, do we?” He shook his head once more in answer.

“That’ll be all, Penelope. You can go home now.”

He hated discussing this case, hated even the mention of Boston or the year he worked the case there.

“Okay,” she said, turning on her heel to leave. “Goodnight, Sir.”

Aaron bid her a goodnight before turning his focus back to the lines of his desk, resting his forehead in his hands tiredly.

He lost the most important thing of his life working the Boston Reaper case. He could hardly stand to think about it often.

_He had left his son in the motel, his face buried in a book. He had left with the promise to be home before it got late, after he had dealt with the case. He had brought the kid along to Boston for sightseeing, to take him to as many libraries his heart could desire. He had left his son alone._

_He had never seen him since._

\----

“You wanted to know immediately about any unusual Boston Homicides?” JJ asked, handing a folder over into his hands.

Aaron barely had to open the front page before he saw the signature and closed it again. He picked up his jacket and bag, nodded towards the door and spoke.

“We’re going to Boston,” he said simply. 

“What? Wai – shouldn’t we wait for the official request?” She asked, hurrying alongside him and gathering the attention of the team who were working in the bullpen quietly. “We haven’t been invited –”

“We will be,” he interrupted quickly.

Everyone watched the stern line of Hotch’s shoulders as he walked towards the elevator, no doubt ready to collect his things and fill out the paperwork for the flight.

\----

“So, from ninety-five to ninety-eight he shoots, stabs and bludgeons twenty-one victims.” Morgan speculates aloud to the rest of the jet. “Women, men, all ages, all types,” he quirks a brow in thought before looking in Hotch’s direction. “No specific victimology or M.O. How did you build a profile from that?”

“We didn’t. Shaunessy took us off the case before we had a chance. I had other cases to deal with, couldn’t stay focused on this one, we had no leads, no more bodies.” Rossi met Hotch’s eye from the side of the jet, recognition in his eyes.

_Rossi had covered for him back in Quantico for about a month while Hotch exhausted every possible reason his son might have still been in Boston. Kidnapping, trafficking, murder, cults, running away – anything that could have possibly removed him from that motel room and out of his life with his father, Hotch tried to find anything._

_But there had been nothing in Boston. So, he had gone back to work, back to Quantico, and began working on every lead he could think of from there. Every criminal he had testified against in court, every other pupil’s family from school his son had run-in’s with. Every neighbour, every local sex offender, anything._

_And again. Nothing._

“BTK, the Zodiac and the Reaper all have similarities,” Hotch began, severing his train of thought. “They’re all highly intelligent, disciplined, sadistic killers who name themselves in the press.”

\----

Derek Morgan isn’t a feeble guy. He’s almost entirely muscle, plus the weight of his bullet proof vest and the intimidation of his FBI regulation firearm dissuades most people.

And yet, somehow, he finds himself being thrown backward through a glass windowpane by a black blur that managed to miss the beam of his flashlight.

When his head connects with the concrete he goes out for a moment, the sharp, radiating pain in his skull is enough to render him stunned and immobile. When his body and brain slowly kick back into gear, he registers a voice splitting through the ringing in his ears.

It isn’t coming from where he knows the Reaper must be pulling himself up off the ground from beside him. It’s coming from inside the house. His first thought is that it’s George Foyet, the man the Reaper was supposedly after, but after a moment of consideration, he thinks otherwise. It’s too young, too timid.

_“… - on’t – please, don’t hurt - anybo… else! He’s not even… - scious, please!”_

Derek slowly recognises the fact that it wasn’t the voice fading in and out, it was his own hearing, or more accurately his own level of awareness.

_“… - op it! Don’t touch him… - ‘s not worth it for you, he’s unconscious!”_

He knows his eyes are shut, his breathing is unsteady, and a dull but fresh pain is emanating from his side. He can feel something touching his cheek and can register the instinctive flinch his mind is trying to tell his body to make – but everything hurts so much, and his limbs are too heavy. All he can do is process what little sound and movement he can hear.

_“Wake up, Derek.”_ He hears. It’s from directly above him, so it’s much easier to process than the quiet, distant pleading. A deeper voice, one that is definitively male. _“It’s time to die.”_

He’s not even conscious for long enough to think about how painfully _cheesy_ that line was.

After that, for a moment he can feel something gentler, hands on his shoulders, shifting him more comfortably. Something is wrapped around where the pain is throbbing distantly. He can hear the same timid voice as before, but it’s closer now, softer too.

_“… - nd I’m sorry. I – I have to go… - st of your team will be coming soon, though…”_

\----

When Hotch finds his way into the address Foyet had given them that Morgan had been sent to investigate, he relaxes. They lost an agent, but not one of their own team members. It was horrible, and he wishes above anything that they could have done something, but he knows losing Derek would have been harder.

Prentiss is standing beside Derek, who’s currently wincing tightly as speckles of glass are pulled out of his bloody shoulder. He grunts once, pulling away from the pain on instinct, and then he’s looking up at Hotch.

“You all right?” He asks carefully, watching the other man’s shoulders rise and fall in gruff breaths.

“He took my credentials,” Derek says with a sigh.

“The important thing is that you’re okay,” he urges. He knows what it’s like to lose someone, and he can say for sure an FBI credential means less of a loss than someone he cares about losing their life.

Derek holds up a golden bullet in two fingers, staring at it bitterly before frowning at Hotch.

“He left me this,” he grits out.

“Power and manipulation,” he explains quickly. “Don’t let him get to you,” he presses. Derek shakes his head, pushing the bullet away into his pocket.

“He’s telling me ‘I had you’.” Hotch and Prentiss nod, sighing themselves as Derek flinches away from another piece of glass yanking out of his shoulder.

“Morgan, you’re alive,” Prentiss says, and Hotch agrees wholeheartedly.

“Do you know why?” Morgan urges. Prentiss begins to say something, but she’s cut off. “I’m sitting here because I was knocked out cold. He couldn’t torture me.” Hotch watches as Morgan leans forward on the edge of his seat, tucking his good arm into a jacket. “Whoever he was with knew that too.”

“What do you mean,” he asks suddenly. “Did you see someone with the Reaper?” Hotch asks, surprised. Prentiss nods, gesturing to Morgan.

“I heard someone else, someone younger. I thought it was Foyet at first, but it didn’t sound like him.” Morgan reaches over to where the EMT had all his equipment, picks up a cloth and hands it to Hotch. “Whoever it was, they weren’t an active participant. They tried to stop my bleeding, and they were asking our unsub not to hurt me.”

“This doesn’t fit the profile, he’s a narcissist, he works alone,” he points out.

“No, the other voice wasn’t a partner, Hotch. They were another _victim_ he just hasn’t killed yet.”

\----

After the discussion at the office, Hotch had never felt less adequate. 

“Between the phone call and the severity of the wounds, we never considered him as a suspect,” he said bitterly, pressing one foot down harder on the gas.

“Why would he do it?” Morgan asked, his stitches visible even in Hotch’s peripheral.

“It put him at the core of the investigation. Everything we had came from him…”

“He left his own glasses at the crime scene,” Morgan continued for him. “He pointed us right back in his direction, and still we didn’t see it.” Hotch nodded, disappointment thick in his movements. “I still don’t understand the victim he hasn’t killed yet, why would he keep someone alive?”

“I don’t know,” Hotch admitted as the car pulled up outside the address Garcia had given them. They unholstered their guns and spread out around the perimeter of the house. “Keep vigilant for a hostage though, he could be using them for leverage.”

When Hotch and Rossi rounded the corner into the kitchen, they found Foyet sat on the edge of one of the dining chairs, Roy hunched over his computer and a scattering of photographs involving the case across the tabletop.

As profiled, Foyet did everything he could to draw the case out, he threatened, he gloated. Hotch played into his game, insisting he needed Roy to write the story.

“I’ll take him with me,” Foyet spat. “He was supposed to write it here and now, and then I could get rid of him and finish of the boy later, but I can wait. I can wait until my story is complete,” he grinned. If Hotch weren’t used to this, it would have been sickening. “I said I’ll kill them both!” He yelled.

“You kill anyone, I kill you,” Hotch promised.

“You think I’m afraid to die? You think you’ll ever find my last victim if you shoot me dead here and now?” Foyet’s eyes darkened.

“You’re not afraid,” Hotch said. “You’re greedy, and narcissistic. You want the recognition that’s going to come from the last victim and the book Roy will write. You want the fame, it’s gonna be like Bundy.” Foyet smirked at that, a spark in his dark eyes.

“I’m gonna be bigger than Bundy,” he seethed. Morgan and Prentiss had made their way in through the back, their guns the closest to Foyet’s skull.

“Well, you can’t enjoy it if you’re dead,” Hotch pointed out. Foyet’s attention was drifting toward’s Morgan, his smile widening.

“Hello, Derek.” He gave the agent an obvious once over, scoffing as he lowered the gun. Within seconds Morgan was on him, gripping his shirt and tugging him away from the table.

“Where’s the last victim?” Foyet still had the grin on his face, he was watching Hotch even as Morgan roughly jerked him towards the door. He jerked his chin towards the dining room table and the photographs concerning the case that were sprawled across it.

“I don’t know, why don’t you ask the father?” His lips peeled back into a sneer as Morgan dragged him across the room and out the door. Prentiss holstered her gun, following Morgan as he handed Foyet off to other agents waiting by the cars.

Hotch’s skin prickled with disgust, his fists clenching of their own volition at his sides. Vaguely, he could hear Rossi directing Morgan and Prentiss to organise final searches of all the residences Foyet had given them. The photographs on the table were mostly newspaper cut outs of the various crime scenes, but some were obviously taken by Foyet himself.

There was a picture of Morgan’s credentials, multiple murder weapons and several items Foyet had taken from the victims. There was an oddly well-organised stack of envelopes with handwritten dates scrawled across the top of each of them.

Hotch fumbled with the letter as he opened the earliest according to the dates on the front of the envelopes. He knew he should be wearing gloves, he knew he should wait for everything to be bagged as evidence, but the comment Foyet had made as Morgan hauled him off _‘why don’t you ask the father?’_ had put him on edge.

_He had lost his son ten years ago, during the Reaper case in Boston. From what he knew, Foyet had never made contact with the police department, so there was no reason to believe the case he’d been actively working on was the one that connected to the disappearance._

_He hadn’t been of any threat to the Reaper, so why would he assume the unsub he’d been profiling was the one that went after his own kid?_

Inside the envelope was a printed image on a glossy page. Foyet had taken care to print these well, and if Hotch didn’t already have a profile of the narcissist, he would have assumed it implied remorse for the victim captured in the image.

A boy, one Hotch knew to be seven, sat on a sofa. His legs were crossed beneath him, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose and a pile of books in the background. He was facing the camera, looking at it morbidly, unease clear in his face but no distress. At least not immediate distress. He was still wearing what Aaron remembered him in, a small sweater that had to be bunched up around his wrists for his hands to poke through the holes.

There was blood caked under his fingernails, a clear indicator that he had fought at some point. Who knows how many defensive wounds the sweater was covering?

Hotch let out a breath, his fist digging into his thigh as he ignored Rossi’s reassurances.

His son, seemingly unharmed but obviously not pleased to be photographed, was staring back at him for the first time in ten years.

The rest of the envelopes were the same. One for each year, all in the same room, same couch, same boy. Hotch couldn’t help but cover his smile, watching the progression of growth from behind a camera was hard, but he knew his son hadn’t been dumped into a ditch somewhere. He was alive. And that knowledge was more than he had hoped for after ten years of knowing _nothing_.

“Do you know where he is?” Rossi asked, his voice laced with concern.

“Y – yeah,” he managed, his voice choked, and eyes slightly blurred with tears he refused to shed. “The – the uh, the motel room.”

_The motel room I left him alone in_ , he struggled not to say.

\----

The hallways had the same, faded and slightly stained brown carpet that he could remember, and the whole team had to flash their credentials before the woman at reception would even look up any of Foyet’s aliases in her database.

“Yes, he’s registered here under room forty-two, agents,” she said stiffly, gesturing to the elevator. Hotch vaguely recalled the same room he had been booked in for his duration in Boston.

_If Foyet had taken photographs every year in the same motel room, it should have been simple. Too simple to find him_.

Room forty-two was the only room that had the option to lock from the outside, and the deadbolt was crudely installed, no doubt by Foyet himself.

Morgan ended up having to jam the grip of his gun against it several times until it broke off from the door. Silently, Rossi put up his hand to hold Morgan and Prentiss back, and he moved aside himself to let Hotch into the room first.

The room smelled like cleaning products and cheap air freshener. The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafted in from the small kitchenette, and when Aaron stepped into the carpeted area, he immediately holstered his gun, confident that his team would be there in case of trouble.

Morgan noticed the first movement, his gun tilting to meet it across the room before he lowered his own weapon.

There was a boy stretched out across a faded sofa, his hair mussed, and shoes kicked off onto the floor. There was a discarded book at his side as well as a dusty looking television remote. He sat up straight as Hotch rounded the corner, his glasses slipping awkwardly on his face as he stood upright with a jerk.

Prentiss eyed the way Hotch practically dumped his gun on the counter, already moving across the room as he spoke.

“Spence?” Hotch asked, his voice cracking.

The boy quirked his head, recognition flickering across his face as he stumbled across the carpet, his mismatching socks a blur of movement. “Hey, hey – oh my god.”

Before anyone in the team could react, Aaron was pulling the kid into his chest and shakily lowering himself to his knees before they could give out. From behind, they could see the shoulders of their boss shaking with every breath. The boy’s hands were fisted in the material of his shirt and it was obvious that he was crying too as he pushed himself further into Aaron’s chest.

Prentiss, JJ and Morgan balked as the boy spoke.

“Dad?” His voice was muffled, his face buried in the embrace, but the title still hit majority of the people gathered in the motel room with enormous astonishment.

“I’m so sorry,” Hotch was saying, spewing out an endless litany of apologies into the boy’s hair as he rocked them slightly. “I didn’t stop looking, I swear – I swear I never gave up, Spencer.”

Rossi looked more emotional than anyone had ever seen him, JJ and Prentiss looked close to passing out and Morgan had to fight to pick his jaw up off the ground where it had dropped open at the display in front of them.

Hotch was vividly shaking with the effort it took to hold the kid against his chest so tightly, and the boy – _Spencer_ , apparently – was scrabbling his hands slightly until they had hooked around Hotch’s neck.

“I know,” he whimpered, shuffling closer. “I – I thought you would’ve thought I was dead,” he sighed, his own grip tightening. “Almost ninety percent of abducted children are dead after the first twenty-four hours.”

Rossi chuckled, and the three other members of the team looked at him accusatorially. He clearly had a better understanding of why their unit chief was crouched on the floor with a kid in his arms that had called him ‘Dad’ no more than two minutes ago.

Spencer pulled back unsteadily, his eyes flittering downwards as he pulled something out of his pocket. “I – uhm, th – this is yours,” he said unsurely, holding something out towards the group in the kitchenette.

“Derek,” Hotch called quietly, his eyes red. “Your credentials.” He still had one arm wrapped around the boy as Derek moved forward and carefully plucked the wallet from Spencer’s hands.

“Thanks, kid.” His voice was undecided, clearly on the fence about what was happening.

“I hope your shoulder’s okay,” Spencer mumbled. Derek softened slightly, his eyes still dancing between his boss and the kid currently clinging to him tightly.

“Are you okay?” Hotch asked suddenly, putting a hand on either side of Spencer’s face. “Did he hurt y –”

“No, I – I’m okay. I just… I was just – I just missed you,” he answered. Hotch shifted, moving to help the boy stand up.

Surprisingly, when the kid unfolded his coltish limbs, he was almost as tall as his father. He looked young still – young enough to be the voice Derek had heard after being attacked by Foyet – but not entirely childlike. There was a maturity to his features, the way he spoke and the look in his eyes.

“Spencer, this is Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, JJ and Rossi, but you probably remember him.” Hotch said after a brief interlude of quiet in which everyone in the room seemed to be looking at him for an explanation, or carefully regarding the boy at his side. “Team, this, uh – this is my son. Spencer.”


	2. Even After All These Years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ew I hate this _ugh._

Penelope’s heels clicked enticingly along the linoleum floors. She grasped a stack of pages against her chest, knowing she was about to pawn them off to whoever would take them, only so she could get a look at what had Derek Morgan flustered and confused. Because that was a rarity.

The hurried phone conversation would be one she’d never forget, especially seeing as the team almost never came back after a case this quickly. As soon as Foyet was booked, they were on the jet home. Normally it took a good several hours of paperwork before they even confirmed the flight.

_“I’m telling you, he’s got a whole-ass kid he just hadn’t told us about!”_

_“Derek, you can’t be mad about this. It was probably really difficult to talk about.”_

_“Yeah, I just… I mean, we could’ve helped him look.”_

_“You’re offended Hotch didn’t tell you he had a son.”_

_“… I guess, yeah.”_

She pulls a baby face when the team walks into the bullpen, stitches standing stark against Derek’s darker skin. She coos at him, as an annoyance more than anything, before whirling on her superior.

“Can I… can I meet him?” She asks tentatively. She was expecting a scruffy looking teenager with black hair and a serious face. Sure enough, behind Emily and JJ, Rossi and Hotch stand on either side of a new face.

Surprisingly enough, Penelope wouldn’t have picked him as her superior’s son. The boy is tall, almost matching Derek, but still having to tilt his head upwards to meet Hotch’s eyes as he stares questioningly. He’s lanky, almost worryingly so, and well dressed. A sweater is tucked neatly into a form-fitting pair of jeans and the carefully folded collar of a button up shirt pokes out from beneath it.

His hair is overgrown and curls beneath his ears, a pair of glasses keeps strands pushed back from his face. It’s brown and unlike his father’s, but the curve of his jawline and the way he unconsciously keeps himself in proximity to Hotch disproves majority of the doubt anyone in the team seemed to have.

“Penelope, this is Spencer,” Hotch pauses. “My son,” he says after another beat.

“Hi,” Spencer says uncertainly, lacking confidence but not actively shying away from the massive grin hanging on Penelope’s face. She is having to actively resist the urge to reach forward, squeeze his cheeks and pull him into an embrace as she typically would.

“I’m taking some personal days,” Hotch explains, “for obvious reasons.” He has one hand resting against the kid’s shoulder, tightening encouragingly. “I need to work some things out, they might take a couple days.”

“Do what you need to do, if there’s a case we can handle it,” Rossi assures. Hotch’s eyes flicker towards Spencer, his expression softening as his shoulders sag. He looks like a puppet that’s been strung too taught for too long.

Spencer obviously recognises the look on Hotch’s face because he turns back to Penelope and smiles again.

“It was nice to meet you,” he says honestly. “All of you,” he adds. Hotch’s grip on his shoulder loosens and the boy leans further into his side. He tilts his chin upwards, makes eye contact with Hotch and then smiles for a second time.

It’s different somehow, and the room full of profilers don’t miss it. The corners of his mouth stay the same, but he presses the line of his lips together and his eyebrows curve in a familial, caring manor. Hotch exhales, curling his fingers around Spencer’s side and nodding towards the staircase.

“I’m going to drop some things off in my office,” he lifts his briefcase, beginning to move for his office. “Bring me up anything I need to sign while I’m here.”

Spencer moves easily at his side, still balancing three large books under one arm.

If there was any doubts about the feasibility of Hotch having a son, they were obliterated as the team watched the enamoured expression dancing in Spencer’s eyes as he clambered up the stairs behind his father.

\----

One of the more intriguing aspects of working as part of a team at the BAU involved the unspoken agreement that profiling was saved for the cases. Wordlessly, each of them understood that profiling each other was crossing a line they didn’t deserve to cross.

That being said, each of them were observant individuals, and couldn’t help but pick up on some of the subtler tendencies of their unit chief.

Hotch was a good leader, he was strong in times of mental duress. He could read the mindset of the team well, when to push them and when to leave everyone alone. Hotch was there for everyone at one point or another, even if ‘being there’ meant understanding they needed space. 

Morgan picked up on how highly Hotch prioritised phone calls. In fact, phone calls seemed so important that for Morgan’s first several months working with the man, he had been under the impression that his boss was waiting for something. He acted as if he was expecting a package or an important letter with the way he continually put a pin in conversations to favour his work phone.

Garcia was vividly aware of how clipped Hotch’s voice and demeanour became when working on cases involving children. But then again, everyone in the team was the same. It was more evident in Hotch’s case seeing as he was the most likely of them all to keep calm throughout an investigation. He was less forgiving during child abduction cases, he pushed the team harder than he normally would. It never caused disputes, everyone working a case like that was more motivated to put an end to it.

JJ was the only one who seemed to pick up on the paternal vibes Hotch had always seemed to exude. At first, it was hardly noticeable, but with how long Hotch had been unit chief and after multiple cases where the team successfully located and recovered a child, it had become obvious. He was always the first one into an area with potential child hostages, always the one to peel away restraints and placate terrified victims. JJ often brushed it off, Hotch was the team’s metaphorical fatherly influence, always worrying, logical, soft when he knew he needed to be and firm when necessary.

Prentiss, who was one of the boldest and most curious, was one of the only ones on the team who picked up on the reoccurring day the unit chief took personal leave on. October twenty-eighth, each year since she had known Hotch, he had been absent. Often, it meant he would miss the jet ride out to a new case, but he was unrelenting. No matter how busy the team was, there was never an exception. She had never pointed it out, assuming it was for a good reason that didn’t require explanation.

Rossi knew the most, and he had kept the information to himself. He recognised the somewhat desperate look on Hotch’s face each time he got a call about missing persons, he knew about the photo frame hidden behind the man’s laptop in his office. He understood things that Hotch clearly didn’t want the rest of the team to know about.

He knew about Spencer long before the resurfacing of George Foyet.

\----

Spencer sat idly on the corner of Hotch’s desk, his legs swinging gently as he calmly watched his father signing slips of paper, shuffling case files about and stuffing away his briefcase and go-bag.

The older man set a dusty storage box onto the desk beside his son before proceeding to heave armfuls of files and reports into it. Spencer watched interestedly, picking up a clear file with dates scrawled across the front page as Hotch continued collecting things from various storing cabinets around the room.

The clear file only had ten images, and Spencer only spent a minute looking at the lot of them before speaking.

“Are these me?” He asks slowly. When he looks up, Hotch is grasping a photo frame in his hands.

“Digital renderings of what you might look like as you matured,” Hotch answers. “Just… so people would know, if they saw you.” His voice is quiet, and he still stares down at the frame in his grip. The pictures in Spencer’s hands look distantly like him, but unfamiliar in a way that gives him the chills. It’s like staring into a warped mirror.

Spencer slides off the edge of the desk and deposits the clear file back into the box, which he assumes is the collection of evidence involving his disappearance. He presses himself up against his father’s side, smiling when he recognises the photograph in the taller man’s hands.

It’s the two of them, slightly blurred with movement and rather faded with age.

Spencer is seven, nearing eight in the photograph. His head is profile, and his smile is quite obviously moments away from breaking into a laugh, wrinkles from his grin surround the corner of his upturned mouth. He’s facing Hotch, almost as if he were about to hide his face into his shoulder. Hotch is smiling at the camera, slight exasperation reading as humour.

Hotch can vaguely recall the picture being taken, by who though he has no idea. He’s in his work clothes. It must have been after a case was wrapped up. He sighs, gently lowering the frame into the box and turning to face Spencer who is blinking at him unreadably.

“I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely, tucking the kid against his chest and leaning his chin against the top of his head as slim arms reach up to hug around his shoulders in response.

“But you shouldn’t be,” Spencer replies quietly from where his chin is hooked over his father’s shoulder. “Nothing happened, I’m okay,” he points out. “I just missed you.”

Hotch chokes out a disgruntled, yet somehow fond, laugh. He repositions himself in the embrace so he can run the corner of his sleeve over his dangerously wet eyes.

He’s missed this.

Almost entirely forgotten the feeling if he’s being honest with himself.

Gripping the remnants of the boxed-up wardrobe in his home to find a fleeting memory or the faintest whiff of familiarity only did so much over the ten-year stretch.

But nothing can compare to this.

The ever-recognizable brown hair beneath his chin, the curls he inherited from his mother, the slim arms tightening around his neck and the soft, reassuring feeling of small inhales and exhales against his chest.

It was undeniably his child. Ten years older, almost an adult now, but his son all the same.

“Why don’t we get you home?” He says after a long stretch of nothing but closeness. Spencer takes the cue and leans back, nodding slightly.

It still shocks Hotch to look at him. He’s been picturing that same seven-year-old for ten years and seeing Spencer _now_ , only one birthday away from being a legal adult, it made his heart ache.

He balances the box of – now unneeded – files against his hip, keeping one hand on his son’s shoulder as they left his office.

Descending the stairs into the bullpen, he could hear the team speaking lowly. Rossi was sat at a desk, looking like he had at least made a reasonable attempt to finish paperwork. The rest of the team was gathered around him.

“…– ‘s not my place, I’m sure he’ll speak with you all once he’s figured everything out for himself.”

“Rossi, _come on_ –” Morgan pressed.

Prentiss thwacked the back of Morgan’s head when she noticed Hotch’s arrival. The hushed conversation halted immediately. They all straightened up innocently.

“He’s right,” Hotch said evenly. “I’ll have a talk with you all after my personal days are over,” he nods appreciatively in Rossi’s direction. “But for now, I’d like to go home.”

“Aaron,” Rossi interjects. “Call us if you need anything,” he says, sincerity lacing his tone. “We’re here for you two.”

Hotch’s features relax, and the boy at his side smiles gratefully at Rossi’s words. His eyes flicker over each person in the room, lingering on Morgan and the wallet with his credentials at his belt.

“Thank you,” Hotch replies. He grips the edge of the box on his hip and watches Spencer carefully as he bounds alongside him, content and from what he had profiled so far – unharmed. Even after all these years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gimme CM prompts
> 
> *grabby hands*

**Author's Note:**

> Give @spidersonangst @febufluff-whump (on Tumblr) all the credit, the only reason this is happening this month is because of them!


End file.
